Now, an online singing test that can tell if you can sing

A team of psychologist has come up with an online singing test that will evaluate people's accuracy of pitch when they sing.

A University at Buffalo (UB) psychologist believes that most people are not as bad at singing as they might think and he is collaborating on the development of an online test that will evaluate participants' ability to match specific tones and melodies.

Peter Q. Pfordresher is among seven researchers in psychology, neuroscience and music education from across the country working on the Seattle Singing Accuracy Protocol (SSAP), a name derived from a 2013 workshop where the collaborators agreed on a set of core tasks that could be used to measure singing accuracy.

Pfordresher said that there are many ways to evaluate singing, but his research and this project are about accuracy not aesthetics.

Pfordresher added that he studies whether people are hitting an intended pitch or not and whether it's accurate or inaccurate.

He added that evidence from research concerning auditory imagery and singing shows that when people imagine a melody there is activity in various motor areas of the brain that are designed for motor planning and people who are poor singers report significantly less imagery.

A description of the protocol will appear early in 2015 in a special issue of the journal Music Perception.